Hi Alexander, > On 15 Dec 2017, at 13:56, Alexander Rössler <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > I'm wondering if you or anyone you know would be interested in a turnkey > solution based on Machinekit.
short answer: yes long answer: see below > From what I have seen so far, it looks like a lot people are struggling > with the basics of getting Machinekit up and running. > > Even if you buy a well supported BBB cape and you are lucky to get the > Machinekit image running in one try, you still need to setup Machinekit > for your particular machine. Right now, you will not get around basic > Linux skills to do this. > > I was thinking about creating a Mach3 alike solution based on > Machinekit. Not including the bad parts of Mach3, but the good ones like > proper (runtime) configuration wizards and an easily re-configurable UI. > > However, I don't think it's possible to create such a system just on the > side, because if you already know Machinekit in and out, then you just > don't have the incentive to build it. Also I don't think it's > financially possible to fund such a thing just by selling electronics > with Machinekit support at the marginal production costs, or else we > would have already seen it. > > So I wonder if you would be willing to pay more for a turnkey Machinekit > solution that is easy to setup, easy to use and simply works. What I would like, and be willing to pay for, is a system - be it Beaglebone Black, Beagleboard X15, a De0 nano or similar board, or a PC with mesa cards, depending on the need of the application - where I would have a program that helps setting up an (initial) application which is not a CNC application per se. Better still, a program which can change the initial setup easily when a project matures. This would have to be done on proper hardware of which I or a customer would be convinced that it’s still available in 7 or 10 years. Not only the PC/Board, but the cape and daughter boards as well. I (and I hope machine builders too) would pay for an application which sets up machine behaviour, and forces a user to write behaviour that’s not resulting in spaghetti code. So that the end user can open the configuration, and see what behaviour the machine has and not worry about the colleague who wrote bad code and has left the company 4 years ago). > I personally don't like the idea of hiding the costs for creating such > system in the final costs of the electronics. So this would be mean paying for > extra software on top of Machinekit. Sure, provide the hardware, and the installation/basic configuration as a service. As long as one has the confidence that it’s better set up, and faster to start with than doing it all yourself it’s an easy calculation in a customer project. Even if one has configured machines before and knows its way around Machinekit. > All in all, this would come down to the idea of using Machinekit just > because it's gratis or because it's great. In my opinion, if you are > just looking for a cheap solution, then you might be better of with grbl > anyway. > From what I have seen so far, there is nothing that fills this > market. Being easy to use and user friendly, being scale-able from a 7$ > ARM computer up to a high end x86 machine and with good commercial > support. > > I really would like to invest more time into improving Machinekit and in > my opinion being a commercial baker of an open source project is the > most efficient way to do this. > > For you as a community member this would mean more work being put into > improving Machinekit, for you as potential commercial user of Machinekit > this would mean less development costs and better support, for me this > would mean I can spend more time doing what I like. Sounds like a win, > win, win situation, doesn't it? > > Please let me know what you think. If you don't want to respond > publicly, feel free to shoot me a PM. > > Best regards, > Alexander -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/machinekit. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
